Thread by @yungneocon

The same people who argue today that trans rights protections will undercut women’s rights protections (what they call ‘sex based’ rights) would 50-100 years ago have argued women’s rights should be opposed because they conflict with labor rights

This isn’t really a hypothetical—the GOP, for ex, *did* support the ERA in hopes it would be used to undercut labor protections for women, children & men, and labor unions did oppose it. But this ultimately boils down to the contradictions inherent in legalistic frameworks.

In both of these cases, in their substantive content there’s no actual way to parse out gender emancipation from labor emancipation, let alone some forms of gender emancipation from other forms, as the British like to do.

The issue is in the *law*, which must draw distinctions where they wouldn’t exist and is ultimately subject entirely to balance of powers & forces. What the British try to convince people is a tension between trans & gender emancipation is purely a result of the legal approach.

They think they’re being ‘materialists’ and accuse their opponents of liberalism, but their entire argument only works when one transposes their concerns from the field of material relations to that of law, with several feints & baits & switches to launder prejudice & power

For many (maybe most), it’s not even this sophisticated—they’re just plain bigots, & don’t even try to hide it, there’s not much we can do with said people but minimize their influence & harm, & hope eventually social pressure & exposure temper their bigotry

But there are some (especially among legal types, politicians, pundits, older activist types, & some segments of academics & professionals), who try to approach the subject through the means discussed above, and that’s to whom this analysis applies

But these types don’t think of this as a common struggle where we are fighting for more freedoms, less violence, more substantive access & a change in balances of powers. They see it as about the use of the state to legally carve out privileges for different groups

This holds for class politics too (a critique Foucault and certain Marxists both made, despite the vast gulf between them, from different angles)—for example, the labor politics that seeks new privileges as protections for some kind of laborers but not others

Or which seeks to advance the material interest of labor, but at the expense of labor elsewhere. This is why pointing out that open borders for ex actually opens new avenues for solidarity merely angers them more.

Because their view is NOT ‘we want ever expanding labor solidarity’, it’s ‘we want to keep the system largely as is, but benefit more as a specific group of laborers, and will use the more radical sounding arguments if they help us advance our cause’

For an even more direct analogy it’s ultimately very similar to how feminism interacts with race & class.

What is justified as an attempt to bracket off issues ‘not relevant’ to gender oppression is really just an attempt to create or preserve privileges for some women (white middle class) but not others—to use a classic example